The distinguished InterAcademy Council, an independent society of top scientists, recently conducted an extensive review of the practices of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which the former found egregiously flawed. The IAC strongly rebuked the IPCC for making various pronoucements based on "little evidence," for "vague statements," and for not "expressing clearly" or giving the proper "perspective" on climate-related issues. The Capital Research Center (whose work I have long followed and respected) rightly deems the IPCC's modus operandi "shoddy" and concludes -- devastatingly:

What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who'll produce the "right" results.

The warming "scientific" community [as the Climategate emails reveal] is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other's papers -- and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it's a travesty.

And, so it is, that we all come tumbling down:

In the end, grievous harm will have been done not just to individual scientists' reputations, but to the once-sterling reputation of science itself. For that, we will all suffer.